Eléments pour une typologie des SN complexes en de en français

Abstract

Inge Bartning : An Interpretation Typology of French complex nominals with de This paper presents a two level interpretation model of French noun phrases with de. On the basis of semantic and argumentai properties of the head noun and the interrelationship between the two nouns it is argued that there is a limited set of prototypical semantic interpretations at the level of the NP itself, the micro-level. These prototypical relations are covered by two essential meanings, namely possession and origin. Syntactic tests support this dichotomy. The second interpretation level is a textual one where the complex NP is interpreted by contextual clues (salient themes in the preceding discourse) or by extra-linguistic knowledge of the referents of the two NPs and their interrelations. In the last two cases the interpretation demands a larger context (at the macro-level) than that of the complex NP itself.